Mind If I Make Love To You

For many years now my Guild collection of the “Golden Age Of Light Music” has been providing me with a perfect soundtrack for afternoon tea. But more than that, it has become something of an everyday quiz for country folk, in my case living on a farm at the edge of Europe in the far west of Ireland. I try to identify the tunes, composers, arrangers and orchestras from a vast treasure trove of titles. This virtual ‘university’ of music helps to maintain the brain as well as entertain.

One afternoon during a catnap, my ears were suddenly alerted to what I thought was Nelson Riddle. Imagine my surprise when I looked down the mystery menu and saw it was Pete King’s Orchestra playing Mind If I MakeLove To You. Without words I’d completely forgotten it came from “High Society” sung as a rumba by Frank Sinatra to Grace Kelly, probably arranged by Riddle. It’s a very good song but somewhat overshadowed in the film by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, True Love and Well, Did You Evah, and not typical Porter. But the irresistible slow-paced, relaxed King arrangement had me completely hooked. Incidentally Peter Dudley King (1914-1982) arranged the original mood music albums for Jackie Gleason as well as charts for Bing Crosby, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin, Julie London and Kay Starr.

This spellbinding tune featuring the strings could easily have come out of a Dmitri Tiomkin film score like Return To Paradise. On the second phrase at bar 9 it goes unexpectedly up a semitone giving it an even more exotic flavour, placing it firmly in Polynesia or Asia. The melody then moves quite conventionally to a natural cadence. On the repeat it sounds even more magical with the woodwind in control.

The bridge, with a haunting violin solo, isn’t really a bridge as we know it, more a filler using material from the main tune in preparation for the final thrust. The strings erupt into one of most exciting climaxes and endings ever. In the coda the familiar Riddle tremors are once again strongly felt. I am almost tempted to declare Mind If I Make Love To You has out-melodied Night andDay! (By the way there are suggestions of two other songs in Mind If I Make Love To You - Mack TheKnife and Morecambe & Wise’s theme tune Bring Me Sunshine).

Mind If I Make Love To You is available on the Guild CD “Melodies For The Starlight Hours “ (GLCD 5196)

Geoff Leonard was born in Bristol. He spent much of his working career in banking but became an independent record producer in the early nineties, specialising in the works of John Barry and British TV theme compilations.

He also wrote liner notes for many soundtrack albums, including those by John Barry, Roy Budd, Ron Grainer, Maurice Jarre and Johnny Harris. He co-wrote two biographies of John Barry in 1998 and 2008, and is currently working on a biography of singer, actor, producer Adam Faith.

He joined the Internet Movie Data-base (www.imdb.com) as a data-manager in 2001 and looked after biographies, composers and the music-department, amongst other tasks. He retired after nine years loyal service in order to continue writing.